Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Easiest way to polish bolt body?

Hey guys I have a Remington 700 with a cerakoted bolt that’s looking a little dingy. I’d like to polish it down to bare steel and let it go at that. What is the easiest way to get this done with common tools?

You could thread a bolt into the back, clamp the bolt in a vice and go to town with 2” wide strips of sandpaper like polishing shoes. 1500-2000 grit will be a polish.

I shouldn’t say go to town, remove the least amount of material possible at each end to keep from increasing clearance.

Maybe a drill press?

400 or 600 grit will be fine enough, 1500-2000 you got to be kidding.

Knock off the cerakote with 340 to 600 grit. And then polish with progressively finer rouge on a rag wheel

Soak the painted bolt body in M.E.K.(Methyl Ethyl Keytone) for a few minutes & wipe it clean.

MEK is nasty. Be sure to use appropriate PPE.

I polish bolts on a hard cotton buffing wheel and green Jackson compound.

We use MEK to scrub our machines.
One guy used to clean, no mask, no gloves.
Epoxy resins, and MEK, sleeves rolled up, bare hands.
We finally got him to stop. But if he gets resin on himself.
he still goes to a bucket of MEK, and washes up to his elbows.


Our chemist calls it Methyl Ethyl Death.

Good ventilation and a respirator are mandatory when working with MEK, working outdoors if possible would be advisable. We used to use MEK in the shop to vapor polish plastic parts we'd machined, holding the parts in MEK vapor makes the machined areas crystal clear as if they had been molded.

What about chucking the bolt into a lathe and using varying grits of sand paper? Seems like the quickest and easiest no?

I like the utra fine stainless steel polishing wheels. Leaves a nice semi matt scratch pattern. I don't like shinny bolts on a hunting rifle. I would probably do the MEK treatment first. Out doors and with a fan or re-breather mask or both.

I'm interested in this too and have a parkerized 1903 Springfield bolt that needs to be polished. The only thing that concerns me about wheels is knocking down sharp edges on the bolt handle. I figures this should be done using some sort of block as backing against something like emery paper. Am I being too anal about this?

Not a problem with the really fine stainless wheel. I would work over the bolt with a backed sanding block and then use the wheel only for imparting the scratch pattern. It removes practically no metal at all depending on the gauge of the bristles. Don't remember which I used but it was the finest grade Brownells had at the time. Possibly 420?

With a course wheel you could do some really serious damage very quickly. The super fine wheel will only remove the Parkerizing very slowly.

Get it down to 2000 grit by hand with areas taped off you should not hit.
Start with 400 to knock finish off.
Adviod excessive metal removal and concentrate most of effort with 1000 1500 and 2000
Get a Dremel.
Mothers mag and alum polish.
Buff it out with Dremel pad and the mothers.


AKM bolt carrier was rough black nitride.
Ya, I pimped it out.... took about 4 hours.
Did the same on a stripped down Mauser 98 bolt
Do not do any lug surfaces tape em off
Took about 2 hrs.

That looks great Renegade!

Ok gents...started with 260 grit and went to 600 whacked it fast with my dremel. Did it by hand...turned out perfect!

Thanks for all your help...total job took an hour!

Vinegar breaks down epoxy before completely cured, and you smell like a salad so skinny girls will be attracted to you.

Exception for his reflection. Good gawd he's ugly!